


Any Other Name

by kyle-with-an-o (evil_saint)



Series: Conquering Love [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Hux fails at feelings, Kylo needs a hug, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 13:19:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11898570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_saint/pseuds/kyle-with-an-o
Summary: A wry laugh huffs past Hux's lips; he reaches for the bottle again. “So there you have it, Lord Ren: the truth of my inglorious origins.” And, because he really is curious, “What about your father, hmm? Exactly what kind of man does it take for a son to crawl up the galaxy’s arsehole and assume command of a cult that makes him hide his face?”





	Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [tarisians](http://tarisians.tumblr.com/) and [thegirlwhoswears](https://thegirlwhoswears.tumblr.com/) for betaing this and being generally supportive and awesome.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Alcohol as a coping mechanism. Canon compliant infidelity. Bad parenting all around.

The weapon is complete.

There will be formal inspections, of course. Systems checks. Final calibrations. The Council will gather for the official test fire. Starkiller will be cleared for active deployment, and then…

 _Then_ …

The excitement that has been thrumming under Hux’s skin for the better part of seventy-two hours surges anew, filling his throat like a cheer. He addressed the techs, the best in the program – _his_ program – with open approval. They have served him well, to the extent that some generosity might be in order.

It is something to think on. Later. Because right now, Hux is indulging himself.

The Master of the Knights of Ren is in his bed, naked, face to the wall, the broad expanse of his back radiating heat under Hux’s fingers. Ren came to him after the speech, helmet lifting off his head as the door hissed open. Hux is aware that Snoke’s chief errand boy possesses a degree of empathic talent, able to pick up on strong emotion without the focus needed to infiltrate a mind. Judging by the way Ren threw the helmet aside and licked into his mouth, he’s half convinced that the knight could taste the day’s elation on his tongue.

Fucking Ren. It’s wrestling a force of nature into compliance. It’s as invigorating as it is exhausting, leaving him panting and wrung dry, aching in all the places that will bloom purple by morning. And, even with Starkiller complete, poised to shift the course of history, the feel of Ren clenching around him, back bowed like a felinx in heat as he begs for permission to touch himself, remains the purest rush of power Hux has ever experienced.

The knight made no move to leave once their activities concluded and Hux, for once, found himself disinclined to insist.

This…  _lingering_ is not what they do. It’s not what Hux has ever done, yet it doesn’t chafe as he thought it would. Ren is heavy and warm and quiet beside him, his back a panorama of thick muscle, mysterious bruises at various stages of healing, peppered with moles and littered with scars. The spacefarer in Hux can’t help but look for patterns in the dark imperfections on Ren’s pale skin: an inversion of the colors in star maps he spent his youth dreaming about conquering.

The scars, however, feel like taunts, reminders of Ren’s life beyond Hux’s sphere of influence.

His attention is drawn to a crescent pattern of silvery divots that runs across the shelf of Ren’s shoulder. He's noticed it before, but it’s only now, with nothing to distract him that the oddity of it has captured his interest.

Ren exhales, ribs dipping with the expulsion of breath. “Hux?”

“Hmh?” he hums, distracted by Ren's scar. From the shape and spacing, it looks like the remnant of some needle-toothed carnivore’s attempt to make a meal of him.

“I’ve been thinking and. My Master will be. Pleased. With what’s been accomplished. If we hope to. You and I, I mean. If we—” Ren pauses. “If we are—” Again he stops, as if reciting by rote and forgot what comes next.

Hux frowns, gaze rising to stare at the back of Ren’s head. It’s not unheard of for them to begin discussing work while the aftershocks of orgasm still pluck at their nerves. Typically, though, it waits until they’re both upright and dressed, reestablishing their professional equilibrium after what is always an acutely personal exchange of power and pleasure. The awkwardly formal half-sentences are familiar as well, an echo of their early encounters, when Ren was still wary, mistrustful of Hux’s promise not to use his submission in bed to undermine his authority outside of it.

Hux can’t pinpoint when exactly it stopped, but considering how hard Ren just came, how shamelessly he begged for the privilege, this sudden apprehension seems entirely non sequitur.

“If we are  _what,_ Ren?” Hux prods, but the question hangs suspended.

He rolls his eyes and occupies himself with leaning close, dragging his lips along the teeth marks on Ren’s shoulder. The scarring is coarse and uneven under his mouth, like a row of crude stitches sewn into Ren’s flesh.

Pulling back, Hux frowns to himself as he traces the ridges with a finger. For all that Ren lacks in strategy, he makes up with a combination of sheer, brute strength and keen enough reflexes to compensate for his sloppy form in hand-to-hand. Add what he can do with the Force, and Hux has difficulty imagining how a lowly animal came close enough to bite down.

Ren drags in a breath, back swelling under Hux’s touch. “Vronskr,” he murmurs. “On Myrkr. I was alone. It was  _not._ ”

Hux’s fingers freeze mid-swirl, gaze narrowing. There’s no pressure behind his eyes, no tingling in the roots of his teeth to warn of a foreign presence in his mind, but—?

Ren shifts, glancing over his shoulder. His hair is mussed, hanging in his eyes. The tilt of his full lips is sardonic, altogether too worldly for the preternatural aura he projects while roaming Hux’s base like something spawned from the void. “At ease, General,” he teases. “I don’t always need the Force to know what you’re thinking.”

Hux’s lip curls. The suggestion of predictability rankles, but he reminds himself that it’s a matter of perception. Ren can be observant when he chooses and, five years into their co-assignment, Hux has to concede that the Knight Lord knows him – perhaps better than anyone since the Academy, which, like the circumstance of this conversation, is yet another development that doesn’t chafe as it should.

“How many?” Hux asks, both out of interest and to divert the uncomfortable direction of his thoughts. His fingers rove, following the bumps of Ren’s vertebrae before veering to trace a welt beside his spine. It’s raised and uneven, thinning gradually as it curls around the softer flesh at Ren’s waist.  Electro-whip burn, if Hux had to guess.

“I killed—” Ren pauses to calculate. “Five, I think. There were more, but the pack scattered when I took out the alpha. It was… early in my training.”

Hux waits for Ren to say more, to explain what he was doing on the planet and if he succeeded in his goal, but the silence stretches. He finds himself wondering when Ren’s training began, how old he was when Leader Snoke found him and what he left behind to be where he is. He doesn’t ask, of course. Ren might bare his body to him willingly enough, but his past, his plans, his motives – such details are beyond the scope of their arrangement. And so, Hux contents himself with mapping old injuries with fingers and mouth, imagining what they looked like fresh, picturing Ren’s features contorted with rage, sweat-soaked curls sticking to his skin.

Ren’s fury can be enticing – when not directed at Hux’s men or his equipment – and he lets his hand trail down the knight’s stomach to the base of what truly is a magnificent cock as he contemplates coaxing him into another round. Youngest General in the Order or not, though, Hux isn’t twenty anymore and his schedule over the last few weeks has been extra grueling. He’s drowsing, thinking of dragging the sheet up from the floor and getting some much needed rest when Ren speaks again.

“Hux? There’s something you should know.  _Now._ Before you make your report.”

Hux blinks back to alertness.

“Hux, I—” Ren tries again. There’s the click of a dry throat as he swallows.

Hux sits up, jaw tight with impatience. He gets a grip on Ren’s hair and pulls until he can look at him in profile. “Whatever it is, Ren, spit it out!”

Ren’s black eyes lock with his and Hux is forcefully reminded of a Jedi koan he picked up as a cadet, about peering into the abyss and finding the abyss peering back. Ren rolls out of his hold, settling on his back and breathes, centering himself.

“You know me as Kylo Ren,” he says, cautious as if expecting to be silenced. “And that  _is_ who I am,but… but, that’s  _not_ the name I was born with, Hux.”

 _That’s it?_ Hux thinks, waiting for an addendum that doesn’t come.  _This is Ren’s idea of a monumental revelation?_

Ren is a telepath. One with limited impulse control and no concept of boundaries. Hux cannot hope to guess which of his secrets have been harvested during the knight’s spontaneous little scavenger hunts through his brain, but it seems  _one_ at least has been left uninspected.

A sound huffs past his lips, not quite a laugh. “You’re hardly the first man in the galaxy who’s had to reinvent himself in order to advance, Lord Ren.”

For a moment, Ren blinks at him, perplexed, then he’s pushing up on his elbows. “What are you saying?”

Hux was hoping to let the matter drop and get some sleep, but one look at Ren’s stubborn pout and he knows the relentless son of a bantha won’t be reciprocating the courtesy of not bloody well prying. He could refuse to elaborate, but as secrets go, it’s inconsequential. All but irrelevant. And besides, be it exhaustion, the lingering euphoria of accomplishment or the oxytocin high that accompanies an exchange of fluids with a regular partner, but the idea of sharing this small confidence with Ren is... _tempting._

When they first took up their posts on what was to become Starkiller, Hux wasn’t even sure of the species that lurked beneath his co-commander’s mask, but now…

Without the helmet’s modulator filtering his speech, Ren’s vowels are sharp and short, like the actors’ in a holodrama from the New Republic’s capital worlds. The drawl of the Midrim is in there too, becoming more pronounced with fatigue or, as Hux has discovered, post-orgasm. Ren is also fluent in Huttese and on one occasion, Hux heard him conversing over a comm in the bastardized Basic spoken along the Hydian Way: hallmarks of a nomadic childhood.

As imposing a figure as the man cuts now, it’s all too easy for Hux to picture him as he must’ve been, a skinny, stroppy child, born to refugees on a derelict space station while the galaxy tore itself apart.

Without Snoke, without the First Order, what prospects would a boy like that have had, other than statistical garnish on some New Republican senator’s data pad, fodder for resolutions that would benefit only themselves?

Hux knows all too well, the knowledge less academic than he would have liked.

He rests his back against the wall, breath catching as the shocking cold of the durasteel seeps into his skin. Getting up to dress seems like too much effort and so he grits his teeth and ignores it, reaching over to lift a pack of Carababba sticks from the stand beside the bed. He taps one out and brings it to his nose, savoring the scent. It’s organic, made from real leaves instead of the synthesized extract that comes with the officers’ vice ration.

The pack was a gift from Ren, picked up when one of his clandestine excisions for Supreme Leader took him past a trade post between the Core and Outer Rim. Hux has never heard of the brand, but Ren assured him that it’s far superior to the Order’s standard issue. He wasn’t wrong.

Hux won’t be lighting it, not in his quarters.

The barracks’ smoke detection works on a facility-wide grid that can’t be shut down for a single set of rooms; another  _economy measure_ that the Council insisted upon, though it remains Hux’s admittedly petty belief that it was done specifically to inconvenience  _him._ Lit or not, the cigarra’s flavor is pleasant, unlike the subject he’s about to broach.

“Does the name Armitage Thorél mean anything to you?”

Predictably, Ren shakes his head.

Hux grins, a baring of teeth. “Of course not. Because you see, Lord Ren, I went to great lengths to bury that boy.”

Dark eyes narrow. “Armitage Thorél,” Ren repeats as if tasting the name on his tongue. “You’re telling me that’s… _you?_ ”

Hux’s shoulder rises, the motion stiff. “Call it the prototype version.”

“So... the Commandant isn’t really your—?”

“Oh, the Commandant is very much my father, Ren.”

Hux glances down, watching the unlit cigarra dance between his fingers. The motions are precise, carefully controlled to keep from tearing the paper and spilling the contents. The habit is a relic from his Academy days, agitated, vaguely irreverent, not unlike his relationship with the man under discussion.

The urge to light the stick, to get up from the bed and pour himself some liquor rises with the need to blur the too crisp edges of his memories. Revisiting the past has always been an uncomfortably literal exercise for him, watching events unfold in his mind like recordings on a holo, as if it happened hours ago instead of decades.

 _Eidetic recall,_ one of his instructors called it.

Hux has no concept of Ren’s brand of magic, though he supposes, in a way, this is his own version. It’s what allowed him to develop Starkiller from start to finish in just over a decade, while overseeing the ‘trooper program and holding command of the fleet. And like Ren’s Force, it doesn’t come without a price.

Ren grumbled once that Hux’s thoughts are suspiciously well organized for one not trained in his precious theology, but the knight has never stopped to question the necessity behind that discipline. If Ren has difficulty picking Hux’s formative experiences from his mind, it’s not because he has any special aptitude for defending against telepathic assault. If anything, it’s because Hux has had to learn to hide those memories from _himself._

He doesn’t remember every minute scrap of his existence with the same degree of clarity. He doubts he’d be able to function if he did, but if he doesn’t focus, if he lets his mind wander, all it takes is a glimpse, a scent, a word spoken in a certain inflection, and he’s suddenly keenly aware of how it feels to be four years old and trespassing on Arkanis Academy grounds, tears blending with the drizzling rain as he stutters out a promise to be brave.

“That’s my little soldier.”

His mother is smiling at him. She’s fine-boned and lithe, what human convention would consider  _delicate,_ and it’s with a twinge of mortification that Hux is reminded just how strongly his own features favor hers.

The Commandant believed that a generic treat and quick dismissal would ensure his wife stayed ignorant of his  _meetings_ with the pretty little droid tech from the kitchens. He didn’t know Celessa Thorél at all, but oh stars, was he going to learn…

In the memory, her dark blonde hair is curling slightly from the damp. She’s young ( _too young,_ Hux’s thirty-four year old self realizes) but there’s a shrewdness in her light blue eyes, a calculated set to her wide, full lips that makes her seem older than she is.

She’s crouched in front of him, adjusting his collar. His hand is too small to close around the metallic limb of the Pathfinder G-Series unit she programmed to escort him through the gleaming doors of the building they’re huddled beside, but he clings to it like a lifeline. He’s supposed to go inside and meet  _his papa_ for the first time. Just stay with the droid. It knows where to go, how to make the doors open and when they find his father, he’s to give him the data chip that hangs from a string around his neck.

“… in case he needs a little persuading,” his mother says, unconcerned, as if this is an everyday occurrence and not the end of life as his four year old self has known it.

She asks if he’s excited.

He isn’t. He’s terrified, but that’s not what she wants to hear. Her gaze is unnervingly steady as she waits for a reply and he nods, choking on a sob. She hasn’t said a word about coming back for him, and despite being barely beyond infancy, he knows what that means.

In bed beside him, Ren tenses. “You mean she just… _left_ you?”

The knight has shifted onto his side and pressed in close. One large hand lies splayed across Hux’s midriff, thumb brushing the base of his sternum, fifth finger resting just above his navel. His own hand has wound its way into the silky mass of Ren’s hair, absently weaving through the tangles.

“My mother had ambitions beyond maintaining appliances,” Hux says flatly, contemplating his unlit cigarra. “I was supposed to be her ticket out of the kitchens, but the Empire was crumbling—”

“—so she made you someone else’s problem.”

There’s a strange ferocity to Ren’s words. Blunt, black nails press into Hux’s skin as the hand on his belly clenches and when he glances up, he finds Ren’s full lips pressed into a grim line, eyes hard, unfocussed.

It’s been months since Ren’s control has slipped badly enough to cause damage, but there are times, like now, when it’s difficult to tell if his moods are his own or if he’s… _channeling._

Hux frowns, tightening his grip on Ren’s curls in warning. “It wasn’t quite so mercenary as that,” he allows.

As a child, he was less forgiving, but as an adult he has come to appreciate the pragmatism of his mother’s choices. She would never have accomplished what she had – marriage to a Brentaalian noble, control of her husband’s assets after his  _oh so_   _tragic_  demise and a seat among the Trade Hall guildsman – if she’d kept her son with her.

And neither would Hux.

His mother had known, even then, that his best chance at a life, at a  _legacy,_ lay with the military, even if she couldn’t have predicted how different his course would be from what she’d seen under the Empire.

Ren prods and Hux finds himself talking about Arkanis’ fall to the rebels within months after being surrendered to the Commandant’s tender care.

He talks about the X-Wing squadrons breaking the atmosphere as dawn spilled over the continent, about the noise, and dust, and screaming and the heavy silence that followed it all. He skips over the thirst, and the darkness, and the fear – a bone-deep, animal panic that still raises cold sweat on his brow at the thought of crawling through an inspection vent – and picks up with the sounds of Imperial battle droids scanning the rubble, a stern feminine voice calling his name…

In the present, the urge to light the Carababba stick and breathe deep is strong enough to make him salivate. Rather than torture himself, Hux picks up the pack and slides the stick inside.

“After that,” he says, leaning over to open the stand’s small compartment and drop the pack inside, shutting it away. “… we were officially in exile. The First Order was just an idea, nothing concrete. So we were relegated to star ships until we were far enough from the Core to risk setting up base. The training complex on QX-5 was one of the first facilities to begin operating.”

“Don’t think I’ve seen it on any maps,” Ren remarks as Hux resettles beside him. “Is it still in use?” A muscular arm snakes around his waist, heavy and solid where it presses against him.

 _Confines_ him.

Outside of combat training, Hux has no recollection of anyone daring to hold him like this. A rebuke sharpens on the tip of his tongue, but there’s something else, something grounding in the contact that he’s abruptly reluctant to lose.

“It’s a habitable moon in the Outer Rim. On the very edge of what was charted at the time, and no. We’ve since moved on to better things. But they were making do, and it came with a convenient prison complex to repurpose.”

From what Hux has been able to gather, it was where the Emperor sent those whom he wanted the galaxy to forget about. He can practically feel the glare of the system’s twin stars, see the heat rippling across an endless stretch of fine red sand, as if the crust of the satellite rusted and crumbled to powder. The taste of it lingers at the back his throat, along with the bitter, blood-like tang he learned to associate with a stomach that was never properly full.

Built with scrap from the war and staffed with the Empire’s dregs, the compound was a far cry from the Academy on Arkanis, but men like his father clung to their former glory. Undocumented desert urchins were fodder for the ‘trooper program. To be enrolled on the officers’ track, you needed a name.

Hux’s lip curls “… a  _pedigree,_ so the Commandant lent me his.”

In truth, it was Grand Admiral Rae Sloane who insisted, after pulling him from the debris of his father’s estate where the man himself had left him to die. Once Hux had proven his mettle (a task accomplished by surviving long enough to graduate) it was the Admiral who saw to it that his achievements were noticed by the right people, enabling his climb through the ranks.

Neither Rae, nor Celessa have ever divulged the truth of their… _acquaintance_ to him, whether it existed prior to his induction into the Order or if it developed as a consequence, but it left his mother the victor in her crusade to force Brendol Hux to publicly acknowledge her son as his own.

Ren is quiet as he digests this information. He tilts his head, eyes glittering as he peers at Hux as if seeing him from a different angle. “You don’t need his name anymore,” he notes, thoughtful. “So why keep it, if you hate him?”

The answer bubbles up, flying from Hux’s mouth before he can think. “Because he said I don’t deserve to have it! That I’m not  _worthy._ Because men like him can’t bear for anyone to supplant them, Ren, least of all their sons!”

The words tear free like a bandage ripped from a wound that’s been festering too long. Hux’s own voice rings in his ears, loud in the confines of his living space.

He does get up then, too restless to remain still. He walks to his desk, aware of his nudity, yet defiant of his own discomfort, and yanks open the bottom drawer with more force than warranted. He pulls up the bottle. Brandy, not whisky and not the decent Corellian stuff, but it’ll do. He fills the accompanying glass to the brim and empties it in two gulps. He takes a breath, hoarse from the cloying burn of the alcohol, and plants the glass on the desk, head bowed, focusing on the warmth spreading from his stomach to his limbs.

He hears Ren moving on the bed and glances over his shoulder to where the knight is sitting up, slightly crooked incisors digging into his bottom lip as he stares.

“Drink?” he taunts.

Ren ignores him. “Hux. Come back to bed.”

He feels the prickle of suggestion, warm and slippery as it drags across his consciousness. It’s not a true compulsion, just… Ren’s unorthodox way of offering comfort. He isn’t sure how he knows this. The knight has never attempted anything of the like before, but Hux supposes he’s been on the receiving end of Ren’s more malicious invasions enough times to recognize the difference. He’s aware that he should be disturbed, outraged by such a manipulative tactic, yet all he can muster is a vague sense of surprise that Ren would bother.

If their roles were reversed, Hux would’ve said something dismissive, or scathing, or if he was feeling charitable, headed for the door.

He really ought to tell Ren to leave. Any chance of more sex has gone out the airlock. There’s no excusable reason for the knight to remain and this evening has already strayed too far beyond the borders of Hux’s comfort to allow it to continue, but even with the past coursing through him like poison, there’s a small yet adamant part of him that doesn’t want Ren to go.

A wry laugh huffs past his lips; he reaches for the bottle again. “So there you have it, Lord Ren: the truth of my inglorious origins.” And, because he really is curious, “What about  _your_ father, hmm? Exactly what kind of man does it take for a son to crawl up the galaxy’s arsehole and assume command of a cult that makes him hide his face?”

Ren is quiet for so long that Hux turns to cast a glance at the bed. The knight is back to biting his lip, dark eyebrows knit in obvious distress. Hux, however, is not known for his altruism and he isn’t about to let Ren off after laying out his own life’s story for the other’s amusement.

“Well? I thought you said it was  _imperative_ that I know your background before Leader Snoke hears of Starkiller’s completion.”

Ren’s lips purse, annoyance flashing in his eyes. “Yes. Fine. Al _right!_ But I’m not having this talk while staring at your scrawny ass, Hux. Swallow your nerf piss and get on the  _bed._ ”

Hux scoffs, though he can’t muster any real offense at the cheek. As a matter of principle he takes his time finishing his drink, stowing away the cheap liquor with a care reserved for finer things. He finds his briefs and tank and pulls them on, snatches up his pillow (the only one issued) and sets it between his back and the durasteel before sitting down, arms and ankles crossed, brows raised in expectation.

Ren sits up as well, looking strained. “My— I mean, as a Knight of Ren, I don’t. We take a vow. There’s a ritual and we… die – no, not literally!” he amends quickly as Hux’s eyes widen. “It’s called a _Severing,_ and. Never mind! The point is that we become someone new, in service to the Force, without distractions, but. Who I used to be,  _his_ father? He’s not like yours. Not cruel, just.” Ren stops bluntly, leaving the statement hanging as if he expects Hux to pluck his meaning from the ether – or his mind, more like.

It took years of exasperating dialogue for him to piece it together, but another by-product of Ren’s obscure affiliations is that he doesn’t have the same distaste for mental probing that most sane beings in the galaxy do, needing the occasional push to speak in complete sentences on subjects he finds uncomfortable.

Hux rolls his eyes. “Just  _what,_ Ren? Use your  _words._ ”

That earns him a scowl, but the knight’s affront is fleeting. His shoulders hunch, expression pained as he struggles to express himself in a medium as mundane as verbal speech.

“… weak?” is what he settles on. His cadence makes it a question, eyes darting to Hux as they do sometimes during more sensual moments and as he would then, Hux gives a small nod, encouraging.

“He left,” Ren goes on. “When I was. Young. I… the Force. My abilities manifested early. When I was a baby? I was told that never happens. He – my Master – he said it made me. Different. Special, but.” Again Ren cuts himself off, though this time Hux doesn’t press him to elaborate.

He’s never seen Ren in combat, but he has read the reports, watched veteran ‘troopers grow hushed and uncertain at debriefings as if they didn’t trust their own accounts. He has felt Ren in his mind, catalogued the devastation inflicted on trained soldiers and machinery designed to withstand war in only a few minutes of unrestrained temper. As much as he resents Ren in those moments for his rash immaturity, the thought of an actual infant wilding that sort of power is, quite frankly,  _chilling._

“My parents fought. A lot,” Ren is saying, voice scraping up his throat, more rasp than sound. “They were always so. Afraid. Frustrated.” His head bows, hair slipping forward, hiding his face. “I could feel it, but. I didn’t. Understand what I… why they… Anyway, my father left and my mother. My mother—”

Hux realizes that Ren’s breathing has grown labored. The knight looks up suddenly, and Hux notices the sheen of sweat above his mouth, all color leeched from his face.

“I’m not. Supposed to talk about this,” Ren grits out. “Snoke. He said—”

Hux’s own breath stalls. He understands, in a sudden clear flash like blaster fire, that he’s watching the knight strain against a mental binding of some sort.

“Ren— _Kylo,_ ” he amends, a faint tremor shaking his voice. “I appreciate that you want to share your past with me, but if Supreme Leader—”

“ _No!_ ”

He startles as Ren lunges at him, snarling the denial.

“No,” Ren repeats more evenly. His naked bulk hems Hux in, so close that he can feel Ren’s breath on his lips. A saber-roughened hand closes on his, pinning his palm to that wall of a chest. “You  _have_ to know, or you’ll never— you can’t understand unless you  _know._ ”

Hux peers into the black pits of Ren’s gaze, heart hammering. He has been inside this man; he has bent his own rules and taken him inside his body, watched him climax with snot and tears and come dripping down his face. Yet, absurdly, nothing they have done before has felt as brazenly intimate as this. It makes Hux’s skin crawl. He can’t make himself speak, but he nods, more for lack options than actual ascent.

The seconds tick by as Ren stares at him, unblinking. Then, he licks his lips.

“Have you. In the Outer Rim. Did you ever see the Core world news feeds about Leia Organa’s son?  About… about his… his death?”

Hux blinks, taken aback by the veering of topic. “I know of it,” he says, voice tight. “There’s a report in the archives.”

He remembers reading about the Resistance leader’s ill-fated progeny in a couple of curt paragraphs on the outmoded data film used to store information that isn’t imminently strategic. Any scrap of intel on Organa was potentially useful, but that particular titbit was worthless – already over decade old when Hux dredged it up, the boy long dead, posing neither a threat nor affording any opportunities to capitalize on.

Ren’s gaze is unwavering. “Ngh,” he grunts, fingers flexing against Hux’s hand. A bead of sweat trails down his temple. “That report. What  _exactly_ did it say?”

Hux stares back, confused about the line of questioning. He can see the toll this is taking on Ren, can feel it in the strange heaviness that permeates the air. Whatever Ren is trying to convey, it’s going to have consequences. The strategist in Hux baulks at the uncalculated risk, while the conqueror wants to push Ren to get to the point.  There’s another part to him, though – one too new to have a name – that tells him to be patient, to answer and listen.

“Not much,” Hux admits. “Just that there was an unspecified disaster at the boarding school the Organa-boy was attending. There were no survivors.”

Ren’s expression doesn’t change. “Unspecified disaster,” he echoes.

Pressure explodes behind Hux’s eyes. It stings, sharp and surgically quick and then, a beam of red is cleaving across his vision, kyber energy drones in his ears, the acrid scent of burning flesh rushing up to fill his nostrils. The sting vanishes as abruptly as it started, his senses clearing. The reflective shock seizes him and Hux rears back, head cracking against the wall. His hand jerks free of Ren’s grasp and he gulps down air, plastering himself to the wall to put as much distance between them as he can, which isn’t very much at all.

Hux is well enough acquainted with the sensation of having thoughts extracted; this is the first time he’s had one grafted in.

Ren doesn’t move, doesn’t apologize. Just continues to stare, eyes big and imploring.

His meaning impacts like a meteor and Hux’s panic abates, replaced by a quiet, frozen brand of consternation. “Ren? Are you… do you mean to tell me... ” He stops. Takes a breath. “Ren,” he says, unable to raise his voice above a whisper, “you  _killed_ him?”

 _Ben,_ Hux remembers.

Ben Organa-Solo: pride and joy of the New Republic’s founding family.

The boy’s early childhood was a garishly public affair, holo clips of a chubby, wailing toddler circulating so widely that some even made it into Order space. Propaganda of course, used to distract from the mounting conflicts of interest within the fledgling Republican Senate. And then, _nothing._ Until that nebulous obituary, naming the Organa heir as one among several dozen casualties.

And now Ren is claiming to have— but  _why?_

Hux knew Ren carried out assassinations on Snoke’s behalf, but why go after the son and not the mother? And… _how?_ That  _incident_ happened twelve, thirteen years ago. Ren is twenty-eight. He would have been little more child himself. So how could he have—?

“… In a manner of speaking,” Ren says and it takes Hux a second to recall which question he’d posed aloud.

His brows draw down. “What do you mean _, in a manner of_ —?”

“I  _told_ you,” Ren interrupts, eyes boring into Hux’s. His voice doesn’t rise above a murmur, but there is an intensity to his words, a sense of significance that vibrates from him like static, raising the hair on Hux’s arms.

“It’s not a  _physical_ death, Hux. It’s a  _Severing._ Of ties, of distractions. A rebalancing of the self. My old life had to be cut away, so I could take up this one. I had to… _bury._ Who I was. Just like you did with Armitage Thorél.”

Comprehension looms. There’s a moment where Hux tries to shy from it, tries to keep the crushing weight of this knowledge from settling in his mind, but it cannot last.

“You… you’re—” His throat closes around the name, choking him.

Ben Organa-Solo is the son of a rebel Commander and Alderaanian Princess, of a Senator and Architect of the New Republic. Descended from a Naberrie queen and Darth-bloody-Vader himself.

He is royalty, the living poster-child of the Empire’s defeat. He is the sole heir to a dynasty of galactic legend, and Ren is…

Ren is  _him._

Stars and the void, he’s been fucking  _a prince._ And Ren allowed it. Because he believed, as Hux did, that they were equal – not only in rank, but in station. Before tonight, Ren looked at him and saw a man like himself. Not royalty perhaps, but one born to greatness. Someone favored, someone honored. But now…

The official line is that the First Order has moved beyond Imperial nepotism, but Hux knows this for the fallacy it is. Yes, he had some help from Rae, but even with a Grand Admiral’s backing, he had to fight, sometimes dirty, for every scrap of authority he commands. Most days, that knowledge is a comfort, proof that he has a  _right_ to bear the insignia on his sleeve, but he knows all too well that those with heritage on their side don’t tend to agree.

“Hux?” Ren sounds wrung out, ragged. His eyes are bloodshot, dark curls sticking to the sweat at his temples. A bruise has blossomed on the side of his neck where Hux marked him with lips and teeth, less than an hour ago.

 _He’s beautiful,_ Hux thinks and that is the thought that breaks him from his daze.

He knows over a dozen maneuvers to unseat a larger opponent with graceful efficiency, but when he pushes Ren off, it’s with the desperate, undignified scrambling of the utterly overwhelmed.

Hux is panting when he gets to his feet, standing with his back to the bed. His hair falls into his eyes and he shoves it back, hating the way his hand shakes.

“Hux?” Ren tries again, voice too thin.

A chime cuts through the silence. For a second, Hux thinks he imagined it, but a glance at his desk shows a blinking red light, confirming that a message has been delivered to his comm. He feels Ren’s eyes on his back, like a physical pressure as he moves to his desk.

“Hux? Please, Hux, just  _say_ something.”

He loves the sound of Ren begging, but not like  _this._ He can’t look at the knight and he doesn’t know what to say, so he focusses on his datapad. The message is from engineering. It’s routine, a report on climate maintenance that Hux doesn’t waste time on unless something has been specifically flagged for his attention.

He begins typing a reply, watching his fingers flit over the keyboard as if they belong to someone else. He instructs the lieutenant to prepare for an inspection. Twenty minutes. He tells himself that it’s only prudent. With Starkiller complete, he cannot afford to leave anything to chance.

“I have to conduct an inspection in the engineering block, Lord Ren,” he hears himself saying, staring at the flecks of snow sparkling in the darkness. “I’m afraid you will have to excuse me.”

“Hux. Hux,  _please_ —”

He can’t do this. He  _can’t._ He has to get out. He has to get away.

“I’m sorry, but I have to see to my duties.” The words coat his tongue like ash. “Good night, Lord Ren.”

He strides to the ‘fresher on stiff legs, moving as quickly as he dares without breaking into a run. The portal slides closed behind him and he engages the lock, more symbolic than anything. If Ren is serious about breaching a door, there’s no mechanism on this base that will stop him.

Hux waits for the door to creak and bend from it’s hinges, for the knight’s rage to tear through the durasteel and quite likely Hux himself. He expects noise at the very least, the sound of his things being crushed and crumpled, but all he hears is the shift of the bed, bare feet on the flooring and the rustle of clothes being donned. There’s the faint hiss of Ren’s helmet locking in place, followed by the tread of heavy boots.

The lights flicker and Hux jumps at the sudden shriek of hydraulics: Ren driving the front door open with the Force, and then, silence.

The breath shudders from Hux’s lungs as exhaustion crashes over him, leeching the strength from his limbs. He feels dizzy with it, and sinks to the floor. He draws his knees up and buries his face in his arms. A lump lodges in his throat and he forces it down, willing away the stinging in his eyes.

He has to get up. He has to wash and dress and fix his hair. He is a General of the First Order and his troops are expecting him. He has to  _get up,_ but for the moment, it’s all he can do to keep his breaths from hitching.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on [tumblr](https://kyle-with-an-o.tumblr.com/).


End file.
